I have two hard drive on my system (2 partitions each for 4) and I would change order of the drive letter assignments. I can't do this in device manager as they are all greyed out and won't let me change them. Any ideas

Let's see...you want to change the drive letters for your hard drives and partitions but you can't! Well, if ME is anything like Win 98SE or before, here is the answer! 1). DOS GOTCHA! Ah ha, thought you didn't have to deal with DOS, right???? Well, that is what Microsoft wants you to think...but here are the facts... It is a DOS rule, that the operating system automatically assigns drive letters to each device and each partition on each device...except CD ROM's, which you can change. So it appears, that under ME, you are STILL stuck with this arrangement. This means that you CANNOT change the drive letter assignment of your fixed HD's. The operating system does that, and you aren't allowed to make ANY kind of changes. Now, originally, you probably had one hard drive and one CD ROM, and then later, you added another hard drive...this is the most typical condition. In this case, REMEMBER THIS...the operating system assigns drive letters in consecutive order to each new device and then goes back and assigns drive letters to additional partitions. Lets take the first possibility: Originally, lets say, you had TWO partitions on the first hard disk and a CD ROM drive. A & B drives are always RESERVED by BIOS for legacy floppies. C is automatically assigned to the primary partition of the first hard drive, D is then assigned to the CD-ROM and then E is assigned to the second partition of the hard drive. Remember, each device is FIRST given a drive letter and THEN, the o/s goes BACK and assigns additional drive letters to the other partitions....So, D drive in such a setup can NEVER EVER be on a two partition single HD computer. D will always be assigned to the CD-ROM in such a case. Now, lets say, you added a new hard drive to this set up...what would happen??? Well, first of all, D would be reassigned to the second partition of the first hard disk...the reason is, in a computer with multiple hard disks, the operating system assigns the LAST drive letter to the CD-ROM, so CD-ROM's have the LOWEST priority for all IDE devices. This is what would happen when you added the new hard drive, making a two hard drive system: C assigned to primary of first drive D assigned to primary of second drive E assigned to secondary of first drive F assigned to secondary of second drive G assigned to the CD-ROM Now you are really SCREWED because all of your installed programs are STILL looking for a D drive letter for the CD-ROM drive! Oh oh! Well, one piece of software I know, does sort of a good job of fixing this problem, its called Partition Magic. It checks files that are copied from one partition to another to see if they are booted from the CD-ROM drive and automatically re-assigns drive letter pointers to the new drive assignment..... My advice to everyone is, when you build a new computer, have immediately change the CD-ROM drive to like Letter S or T, so that all software will install to that drive letter. That way, you can add all the hard drives you want and make a whole bunch of partitions on them and not run into a drive letter problem later on if you add a new hard disk to your computer... The answer to your question is, the o/s assigns the drive letters for IDE devices (Hard Disks) and there ain't nothing you can do about it...the only drive letter assignment you can change is the CD-ROM.